Thursday, November 06, 2008

Rahm Emanuel Learned a Bad Lesson on Wall Street

The problem with people who make their fortunes too easily, via inheritance, or political payoffs, is they think everyone who is rich made their money that way. Thus I'm quite unhappy that Rahm Emanuel is the new Chief of Staff, because as a lifelong partisan, he was paid off by after working as a senior adviser for Clinton, going to work for big Clinton supporter Bruce Wasserstein at Dresdner Klienwort Wasserstein. I guess he knew a lot about finance, because he made $18MM in just over two years there. He also had a board seat at Freddie Mac, a job that requires showing up, and he got a couple hundred grand for that in 2001.

It's simple patronage and access, and I presume that strongly colors how he perceives wealth is created.

I wonder if that's why there are so many limosine liberals in the top investment banks. First many go to ivy league schools that teach them that capitalism is corrupt, then they go to an investment bank and "network" and lie to people to do deals that make them big sums of money. Then they feel guilty about that and support lots of leftist causes, because they assume that this is how business normally works.